Zac back in water after shark attack

Zac Skyring shows off the holes in his wetsuit after a shark knocked him off his surfboard at Broken Head last week.

Nigel Skyring thought the worse when he saw what he believed to be a 1.5m bronze whaler shark slam into his 14-year-old son, Zac, knocking him off his surfboard at Broken Head early last Thursday morning.

Seeing blood coming from Zac’s mouth after the teenager had scrambled back on to his board,

Nigel’s first thought was that the shark had taken a piece out of his son’s side.

But thankfully, the blood was from a split lip caused by the surfboard hitting Zac’s face.

Nigel said he was paddling out when he saw a ‘bronze flash’ hit his son as he was going over the crest of a wave.

“As a parent, it’s not a nice thing to see,” he said.

“It could have gone either way.”

After the initial shock, Zac, with his father with him, paddled to the beach where he found three tooth marks in the left arm of his wetsuit.

The band on his wristwatch was also slashed and he was left with three distinct ‘bite’ bruises on his arm.

Nigel said Zac was a bit shaky for a while, but he went to school later in the morning and was back in the surf the next morning ‘loving it’.